starfield in maya

tonyd927

hello,

I am trying to render a space scene in maya for my animation course.

I have the ship, a few planets and an asteroid and 4 camera angles.

What I cant seem to wrap my head around is lighting the scene and adding the stars.
How do I add a starfield in Maya 2014 and a sun with a lens flare? thanks!

Eric Chadwick

Use a directional light for the sun.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/index.html?url=files/Create__Lights__Directional_Light.htm,topicNumber=d28e567245

If the backsides are too dark, for example if there are nebulae or other light sources nearby, then duplicate the sun and rotate it 180 degrees and change it to a much lower intensity. A different color would be nice too.

For the glowy sun ball, use an Optical FX utility on the light.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/index.html?url=files/Lighting_nodes_Optical_FX_Attributes.htm,topicNumber=d28e572443

For the star field, make a sphere, invert it, and put a stars texture on it.

Here's an example, made in 3ds Max, same basic techniques though.
http://ericchadwick.com/img/robot_rising.html#cubemapbackdrop

tonyd927

how do you paint the stars? Im not following

When I created a sphere and inverted it and placed a texture, you cant see half of the stars because of the directional light...

Eric Chadwick

Use a tiled starfield texture, or paint one. Tons of tutorials out there.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&q=tutorial+starfield&oq=tutorial+starfield

Use incandescence to make the sphere fully bright.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/files/Shading_Nodes_Common_surface_material_attributes.htm

tonyd927

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Use a tiled starfield texture, or paint one. Tons of tutorials out there.
https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&q=tutorial+starfield&oq=tutorial+starfield

Use incandescence to make the sphere fully bright.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/files/Shading_Nodes_Common_surface_material_attributes.htm

They arent working. Im getting the same results from multiple tutorials. The directional light is hiding half of my stars.

Eric Chadwick

What's going on with the stars material? Are you using incandescence?

You could instead use particles for the stars.

tonyd927

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

What's going on with the stars material? Are you using incandescence?

You could instead use particles for the stars.

Can you please explain how particles are used to do this?

Eric Chadwick

Saw this earlier, searching Google for "starfield tutorial maya". Did you try a few searches? Seems like you haven't tried looking...

http://thefulldomeblog.com/2013/07/03/creating-a-star-field/

tonyd927

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Saw this earlier, searching Google for "starfield tutorial maya". Did you try a few searches? Seems like you haven't tried looking...

http://thefulldomeblog.com/2013/07/03/creating-a-star-field/

I actually did that one. It doesnt work with my scene because I have a space ship flying and a directional light.

Eric Chadwick

What do you mean it doesn't work? The author talks about how to use lights, and yes it's animated. If stars get in the way, adjust your emitters.

Which school are you attending?

tonyd927

Basically I when I create and scale the emitters and slide the timeline I get a preview that I like. Very densly packed stars.
However when I render using mental ray:
1. Either the stars are the same dim grey or white color, and dont vary in size.
2. Or it just renders a blank blue screen.



Here is the space scene file:

http://www.filedropper.com/scifi18

And here is the starfield file:

http://www.filedropper.com/starfieldtemplate

Eric Chadwick

Well, I'm no expert in Maya, so I can't really diagnose what's going wrong. Except, have you tried another renderer besides mentalray?

Also, that same site has this for download, might work better:
http://thefulldomeblog.com/2013/11/13/background-stars-v2/